1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a defrosting system of a refrigerator configured to remove frost fixedly formed at the refrigerator, and a defrosting method of a refrigerator.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a refrigerator stores food by refrigerating and freezing the food using a cool air supplied and generated by heat exchange with an evaporator. The cool air generated by contact with the evaporator is supplied to a refrigerating chamber and a freezing chamber to perform a heat exchange with the stored food. The cool air that has circulated inner spaces of the refrigerating chamber and the freezing chamber is in turn supplied into a heat exchange chamber installed with the evaporator via a predetermined circulating path. The refrigerating chamber introduces an external air thereinto by way of opening and closing doors, where the introduced external air circulates along the circulating path inside the refrigerator as mentioned above.
At this time, humidity included in the air circulating the interior of the refrigerator adheres to a surface of the evaporator to grow as frost by way of contact with the evaporator.
An increased amount of grown frost causes great hindrance to heat exchange efficiency and ill affects an air path passing through the evaporator, such that, if the frost exceeding a predetermined amount is completely adhered to the surface, a defrosting operation is performed using a separately-provided defrosting heater.
The defrosting heater is generally mounted at a downstream section of an evaporator, which is to heat the evaporator by moving a hot air generated by the defrosting heater upwards by way of convection current.
Meanwhile, a power is supplied to the defrost heater if the defrosting operation is performed, and the frost adhered to the surface of the evaporator near the defrosting heater is melted away by the heat generated by the defrosting heater, and the heat from the defrosting heater is gradually transmitted upwards of the evaporator by the convection current to gradually defrost and remove the frost fixed at the surface of the evaporator.
The operation of the defrosting heater is controlled by time in consideration of opening/closing frequency of refrigerator doors. A high temperature exceeding 300° C. may be generated by an inaccurate operation of defrosting system to decrease a refrigerating/freezing efficiency, or to fail to cope with an inner environmental change that flexibly changes in response to an inner situation of the refrigerator, whereby the frosting operation is not performed at an opportune time to deteriorate the refrigerating/freezing performance.
Therefore, a lengthened opening time of a door on the refrigerator makes the defrosting heater operate frequently to decrease the accuracy and efficiency of defrosting operation.